Pages

Monday, December 28, 2015

My husband is a carpenter by trade and his shop is on the same
three acres as our home, so sawdust follows him into our house. It is a fine powder and not big shavings, so
I never see it or feel it until I sweep or vacuum. I have learned to never wash
my things with his work clothes unless I want to break out in a rash
afterwards. The chair where he sits at lunch has to be dusted once a week
because it collects a fine film.

He found a new job last month and hired out as an “independent
contractor.” His boss and fellow workers are in awe that a man who once managed
twenty employees and grossed six figures in one year is now working alongside
them. Because for once he is not the boss, he jokes that he finally got a real job. He can choose his own schedule but
so far he has worked a 40-hour week. Instead of the same sturdy school furniture
he built for the last 30 years of his life, he is building cabinets for a local
company and enjoying not being the boss and not filling out page after page of
forms the government requires of small businesses.

This is all part of his big “Retirement Plan.” It is how he
closes out one chapter of his life and moves on to another. He is too young to collect Social Security,
so he continues to work without the hassle of employees, tax lawyers, and a CPA
on the payroll. He gets to transition responsibility onto someone else and uses
his free time to work with wood to create something new for fun and profit
instead of the same patterns he built for thirty years.

I miss him being underfoot. I miss him walking over from his
shop several times a day to freshen his drink and interrupt what I am doing. I
miss him sneaking up on me while I am deep in thought and scaring me in the
process.

I had to stop what I was doing every day and make sure his
lunch was ready at noon, but now I pack his lunch at night for the next
day. I set the coffee pot so he can take
a full thermos with him to work in the morning. He leaves before I get up in
the morning and my day is spent alone and uninterrupted until he gets home at
dinner.

I miss him. I miss our
conversations. At lunch I sit and talk to his empty chair. I miss the sawdust. I
noticed the other day his chair stays clean without him here.

Monday, December 14, 2015

HoneyBunch and I married when in
our fifties.By then we had a lifetime
behind us as well as a moving van of stuff each that we wondered how we would merge
into one home.

I moved into his house after the
wedding and went through every nook, cranny, room, and closet, and totally
rearranged it into “ours.” Organized is the better word. His bachelor pad was
clean but kind of “disorganized.” His ex
had left him with all the odds and ends she did not want on her quest to a “better
life,” so I replaced things a little at a time. It took me one year to fit all
I wanted from the two houses into one and sold my old house.

We compromised on a lot of
things, but still we ended up with two china cabinets and two family-sized
eating tables. I kept my “buffet” and he kept his “dry sink.” He kept his
Christmas doll collection and I kept all
my nativity sets, but it took me several years to convince him we should limit
our Christmas decorating to just the dining room. It limits how much stuff we set out which is
a difficult thing to do since together we own more than twenty bins of
Christmas stuff. Yes, twenty big bins.

I finally convinced him this fall
we should merge our Christmas things into one, so we went through all the boxes
and bins, and we got rid of a lot of “stuff.” We sold it all at a yard sale –
old, beat up, metal Christmas signs one sees at roadside gas stations, homemade
table top decorations made from garland, strings of blinking lights, or corn
husks. Old Home Interior Christmas knick knacks and my collection of Santa salt
and pepper shakers and ash trays (which I had to explain to several folks was
an ash tray and not one of those plates you set on the stove top to set
stirring spoons on while cooking).

What did not go was the
twenty-six year old artificial Christmas tree that I threaten to throw out
every year or HoneyBunch’s fifteen-footer.
I dust my old tree off, “fluff” it up, and position it just right so no
one sees the weak spots where the “limbs” no longer want to cooperate. HoneyBunch threatens to set up the
fifteen-footer up on the back patio, maybe on Christmas Eve, and give it one
night of lights and glory.

I agree. My raggedy old tree and his giant are remnants
of other times. It does not matter
whether they were good or bad, they are reminders of who we are today, and for
that we are grateful.

Monday, December 7, 2015

My mother-in-law kept a Christmas
cactus over her sink on the window sill that looked out into the back
yard. Someone had given it to her as a
present and she cherished it all the years I knew her. It had three, spindly stems and never grew
others. It also never bloomed.

When the plant grew long and
unwieldy, she would cut off some of its length and repot the cuttings. These she offered to anyone who had shown
interest in the plant. I always deferred
the offer, laughing at my inability to keep any house plant alive for more than
a month. But in all honesty, I found the
plant ugly.

If this was what it was supposed
to look like, I did not find it lovable.
It was unworthy of all the attention and care my sweet mother-in-law
gave that barren, little plant. I would have ditched it and moved on to
something else to overwater – like the African Violets or Venus Flytraps that
my children gave me as presents.

I wasn’t there when my
mother-in-law passed away. By then I was
married to my second (and present) husband.
I wonder if her family fought over that old plant like they did over all
her other possessions.

I would have taken that plant. I
would have cared for it as much as she did all those years. There was nothing
in her house that I remember as well as I do that ugly little plant, but I
remember her loyalty to it. She knew
that one day it would bloom. One day, it
would return her love.

Monday, November 30, 2015

I didn’t get married until
January of 1973, so while shopping for Christmas presents the months previous,
I found a beautiful old-fashioned Nativity set on sale that I bought for my
hope chest. It is all wood and the figures,
the people and the animals, are made of sturdy clay. It has the look of old European artwork, so I
fell in love with it the moment I saw it at the store.

It has graced my Christmas tree
every year for the last forty-two years. It is the first thing we set out
before a single ornament is hung. Each
of my three children has played with the figures and I encourage each of my
grandchildren to do the same. I like knowing that when they hold the baby in
their hands, they are acknowledging who is the cause for all the celebration.

The “grass” has worn thin in some
areas and some of the brittle wood has chipped off the ends, even the angel
fell off its pegs years ago so we hitch her at an angle onto a plank that
sticks out of the roof.

It has seen several artificial
trees, some tall and some short. It has
graced some magnificent real firs in some years. It even towered over a small table-top tree
the year I got divorced and I could not afford Christmas for my three children
and myself.

There was the year that we could
not find the box in which it was stored and I feared we had lost it altogether.
It showed up, hidden in a back corner of the garage, behind a pile of plastic
storage boxes filled with auto parts.

People buy me Nativity sets and I
have quite a few. They are expensive and
more beautiful and definitely more glamorous, but they could never replace that
one. It represents the dreams of a dreamy-eyed, twenty-two year old woman, but while
my family and faith and future did not turn out how I thought it would, I am grateful
that it turned out the way it did.

Monday, November 23, 2015

When my youngest son told me I
was going to be a grandmother, I had just turned 51. I felt I was too young to be the oldest
ranking person in the room, but I had no choice. A baby was on the way and I was going to be a
grandmother.

Memaw, Nana, Mimi, Oma – I tried
them all on, and decided I wanted to be known as Grandma. It was simple and descriptive.

That little baby boy awakened in
me a warm, strong, memory that I did not know I missed. He reminded me of a time
when my own children were young, a time that slipped past too quickly because I
was distracted with work and home and a difficult marriage.

Being around this little boy allowed
me to relive those moments; this time with a wisdom based on knowledge and
appreciation.

His little brother followed seven
years later, and then we went through a baby boom. My daughter gifted me with
two step-children and two more babies all within three years. My youngest married a second time and I soon
had another step-son and two more grandbabies.
Then last summer, my oldest had a precious baby girl.

Ten beautiful grandbabies; all in
a matter of fourteen years, and my husband’s two sons have not begun to add to their
families yet, so there may be more.

People think I love my grandchildren
more than my children. No, that is not
true. I love them each differently. My children
and my grandbabies are my legacy, my step into the future once I am gone.

I have much to be grateful but my
grandchildren are a blessing that fills my heart with joy.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Back in 1994, I discovered a
wonderful children’s book called The
Greatest Table: A Banquet to Fight Hunger.
Printed on one side of a continuous sheet of paper, it folds into itself
like an accordion and creates an amazing book.

Sixteen children’s book authors
collaborated with the charitable group Share
our Strength. The money raised by the sales of this book went to fight
hunger in America. Each artist interpreted what “the greatest table” meant for
them and the editor Michael J. Rosen arranged it into a unique treasure.

Because I could not presume that
all of my middle school students would be celebrating a traditional
Thanksgiving dinner - nothing like those idealized and elaborate feasts one
sees on television - I used this book to demonstrate that we each celebrate
differently and to different degrees.

In the book people of all
cultures and ethnicities sit around different tables; some are seated on mats
or blankets. Some are indoors; some are
outdoors. Single souls or whole crowds, everyone is grateful for what they
have. Some pages show two parents; others show several generations, but others
have only one parent or none. On some pages groups of children sit
together. They might be siblings or they
might be friends.

The food varies and not one page
has the traditional American turkey and dressing menu. Soups, fruits, and breads are served.
Everything looks inviting.

There is no one definition for
what makes “the greatest table,” except for one thing – the invitation to share. Throughout the book, the message is
clear. The greatest table is one in
which we share what we have with others.

With Thanksgiving approaching
soon, we are all reminded that the day is to show our gratitude, and what
better way than to share our bounty with others.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Born in the early light of day,
the baby’s eyes are shut tight, so are his fists. Swaddled and lying in his
crib, he wonders who this strange thing is that smiles at him, flashes lights
in his eyes, and laughs so loudly.

One day he will understand why
she props him up against the corner of the sofa and giggles when he teeters
over and falls onto the soft cushions.
She tickles him, but he forgives her because she smells of milk and she
is warm when she cuddles him.

A crowd of people (for now he
knows what these creatures are) gather around him. Mommy dresses him in a scratchy outfit and there
is laughter and jabber, things people do when there is more than one in the
same room. They “ooh” and “aah” in one voice as one of them, he sounds like a
daddy, pours water over his head and smears slippery stuff on his forehead.
Doesn’t that usually go on the other end?

Pages turn. Birthdays and
Christmases come and go. Some school day pictures capture smiles, others don’t.
Only his family, his grandmother, or Farrah Fawcett gets a smile out him.

He loves to swim, to eat potato
chips, and to play outdoors. He doesn’t smile in soccer pictures. He hates being a little teapot, and he hates the
jerk who stole his bike when he was ten.

He dyes his hair purple and
green, and the camera turns its attention on the baby sister and the little
brother. Instead, Mother collects his stories, his poems, and his art in the
album.

The pages slow down, but that’s
okay. Now a new face smiles on those pages. . . .

Born in the early light of day,
the baby’s eyes are shut tight, so are her fists. Swaddled and lying in her
crib, she wonders who this strange thing is that smiles at her, flashes lights
in her eyes, and laughs so loudly. He
tickles her but she forgives him because this person she calls Daddy is so warm
and cuddly.

Monday, November 2, 2015

When the
ex-husband decided he wanted a divorce, there was little I could do to stop
him. For almost thirty years, we danced
to the same song: he left, he came back with promises, he broke the promises,
and he left again.

My
marriage and my patience were worn thin.

He swore he
had never been happy with me and with his life. I could understand his displeasure
with me, but what about his children, his home, his livelihood? He said this was his one shot at happiness,
and so we got divorced.

If you
lost everyone and everything in your life, what would you miss most? What would keep you going?

I tried
to understand his motivation but I couldn’t. I liked my life. I loved my children and my family. I had friends who rallied around me. I liked
my home, my career, and my things. I had
a bed, clothes, food, books. I had a
roof over my head, running water, and an alarm system that helped me feel safe
at night.

Other
than the divorce, little had changed in my life. I considered myself lucky and
blessed.

When I
expressed too much optimism to one of my friends one day, she gaped at me and
asked why, after all that had happened?
I was surprised she didn’t know me better. I had my health, my family and friends, my
home, my job, my faith. The ex was the unhappy one. Now that he was gone, I could shine again
instead of constantly being blamed for his misery.

And there
is my answer. I am grateful for my family
and my faith. They keep me sane and hopeful. I have hope in my heart and
determination in my soul.

Monday, October 26, 2015

According
to my grandmother, the cucuy (pronunciation: coo coo ēē) recognized a kindred
lost soul when he saw one and would abduct the bad child at night. He had eyes that gleamed in the dark and had
fangs that tore through young flesh as if it were cake. No one would miss the
bad child the next morning. They would
be too busy celebrating good times and lavishing all their love and attention
on the good children the cucuy left behind.

On days
when I was exceptionally bad, I slept with one eye open, knowing the cucuy was
waiting for me to fall asleep.

I have
used the cucuy on my own kids but not to the extent it robbed them of their dreams.
My children had their own bouts with
night terrors. As a little boy, my
oldest tried to escape his by sleep walking.
I was always on the alert and followed him around the house until I
could steer him back into his bed. My
youngest swung punches and kicked at his brother and sister in his dreams. We
had countless family meetings about not bullying their little brother.

It was my
daughter, the middle child, who suffered the worst dreams. A ghostly specter,
she said, floated out of her closet every night and tried to steal her soul. Similar in description to the Dementors in
Harry Potter, her ghoul was all white – long white hair, gown, and fingers. The
five-year-old begged to sleep with us but her father refused, so I sat guard in
her room with the lights on every night. I promised her I would not leave her
alone. At first she startled awake several times during the night, making sure
I was still there, so it took her a while to believe me that I wasn’t going
anywhere. I slept sitting up in a rocking
chair for over a month until she got over her fear.

It
doesn’t take a genius to see why we are afraid of the dark. Humans are diurnal animals, not nocturnal. At
night our vision and spacial acuity is limited.
It heightens our other senses and our imagination makes up what we
cannot see. We feel out of control, defensive, and vulnerable. Emotions like
loneliness, sadness, grief, stress, and depression double in weight, and the
span of one night feels like a lifetime.

The
moment we cycle back into the light, we regain our footing. If we were to encounter the cucuy, we would
take a club to it and finish that child-stealing sucker off. If not, we would call 911 or raise a posse
and hunt it down. In the daytime, we solve our problems, face our bullies,
react with reason. We find hope in the sunlight and laugh at our insecurities.

We certainly
would not drive into the spooky woods in a car that needs a new battery or is
running low on gas. We would not trek
through the mud at night toward the creepy house that sits abandoned by the dilapidated
cemetery. And we certainly would not let
something with a baby-sounding name like “cucuy” to scare the daylights out of
us.

Monday, October 19, 2015

With Halloween just around the
corner, everything around us screams Boo! I went with HoneyBunch the other day
to Hobby Lobby and then to Lowe’s. There was a whole section of expensive,
scary lawn decorations. I am talking The
Grim Reaper, a horrific witch who lunged at you as you passed in front, and a
zombie who drooled and turned to follow you with its watery eye sockets.

Way to go! Buy that trio and you make up what you spent
on decorations by not having to buy Halloween candy. The neighborhood kids and their parents would
be too frightened to come near your abode.

What scares you besides opening
your water bill every month or the price of beef?

I hate scary movies. I do not like zombies or vampires, Chucky or
the guy from Elm Street. I like realistic
endings. Let me emphasize that again –
endings. I want to know that when you kill something, it stays dead. I realize that commercially successful movies
will engender sequels and prequels, but I hate scary movies that make you
cringe and your heart race for two hours and the “thing” is still alive. No,
thank you.

I hate scary books more. I have a very vivid imagination. Whereas I can mute a movie and it lessens the
fright factor, I cannot mute my imagination.
I have a difficult time with horror or realistic fiction novels where
the suffering and the gore are graphically detailed. Double no thank you.

I hate pranks, scary pranks where
things jump out at you or fall on you and you cannot escape. I do not have
quick instincts so the snake that pops out of the box or the furry thing that
falls on my head or the mucousy thing someone left in the drawer for me to
accidentally touch is NOT COOL. Years
are shaved from the few I have left.

I hate being alone, at
night. I hear noises and see
shadows. Things glow and slither and
scamper into corners. I end up turning on all the lights, double checking all
doors are locked, and sitting with my back to the wall where I can see all
entrances and exits easily.

Probably the thing I hate the
most is the one gift God gave me that makes me unique – my naiveté. I am the trusting chick in the movies who
answers the door or the phone or finds herself walking down the street at night
alone.

I once had a breather who called
me on the phone every time I was alone in the house. It was like the person was watching me. I was
shocked to learn it was a person who I had befriended at work, a loner everyone
else avoided. I was at a disadvantage until I realized the same background
music played when both the breather and the co-worker called. When I confronted
him and told our supervisor at work, I was able to get rid of him.

Another time a bunch of drunks followed
me after I had dinner with some friends on the Riverwalk. I got to my car and
locked the doors right when they reached for the door handles. As I drove off I honked my horn to cause
attention and scare them away. I should have let my friends drive me to my car
when they offered.

I am not a coward but it is good
to know one’s weaknesses. It helps to
make me stronger. I can protect myself
and guard my soul. Knowing this about myself, I would rather spend my money on
candy or Charlie Brown holiday movies than buying ghouls for lawn decorations.

Monday, October 12, 2015

We bought a house in the older
area of the little town. The houses on that two-block neighborhood were on
quarter-acre lots, made of brick on all four sides, and were spacious. The
owner had passed away and the heir had inherited several houses and wanted to
liquidate all the properties, so he sold the house to us at a ridiculously low
price.

The real estate agent knew the
deceased and told us she had passed away within days after one of the neighbors
found her ill inside the house. Her
husband had died several years previous and their one son had died in a war a
long time ago, probably Vietnam.

My first husband and I divorced,
the dog and cat died, and the three kids grew up and moved away in the fourteen
years I lived in that house, but I never felt alone.

There were lots of times I felt,
heard, or saw movement inside the house, but when I went to check, there was
nothing or no one there.

One time I was standing at the
sink washing dishes and saw movement out of the corner of my right eye. A
person came out of the bedrooms, crossed the living room, and stood on my left
as I scrubbed at a dish. Thinking it was
one of the kids, I turned to joke with them if they wanted to rinse or dry the
dishes, but there was no one there when only a moment before I had seen and
felt a real presence.

There were many times, mostly in
the evening or at night, when I saw a shadow move that I knew was my
“ghost.” The lady across the street
complimented me one day as we both worked on our front yards that the owner
would be pleased with the way I cared for her house, so after that I would talk
to the empty rooms, letting my ghost know that I was taking care of our home
and she could rest easy.

In a way, we had both ended up alike
– lonely females in a lovely old house.

One evening I became so engrossed
in a novel that I read far into the night. As I lay on my bed I noticed a flash
of white in the darkened hallway. I got up
and followed it, thinking one of my kids had seen the bedroom lights on from
the street and had come to visit. Barely
out of their teens, they sometimes would drop by and crash at my house,
especially if they were troubled.

In the dark, I could see the flash
of white turn into the living room/kitchen area. By the time I got there, its
luminescence was visible outside on the back patio. I did not have time to turn on lights if I
wanted to catch my child’s attention so I rushed to the back door.

It was then I noticed movement
around the Morgan building in the back yard. Three shadows lurked back
there. I took a step away from the door
when I noticed it was unlocked. In my
carelessness, I had not secured the house for the night before becoming
engrossed in my novel. I quickly latched
the door, turned on the outside security lights, and raced to the alarm system
that armed the perimeter. If the trespassers tried to get in, the alarm would
blare, alerting the neighbors.

The three scurried away, one
jumping the back fence, the two others ran toward the side of the house. I did
not waste time and ran to the other outside doors making sure they were all
locked. I stayed awake, alert the rest of the night until I saw the sun rise.

I never doubted afterwards who
the flash of white was in my hallway. My
friendly ghost kept constant watch over her house and me. She wanted me to know I was in danger. She led me to the unlocked back door. She saved
my life.

I don’t remember any more
apparitions after that, but on that last day when the house was empty and all
my junk was ensconced in my new home far away, I said goodbye to her. I stood
in the middle of that big kitchen/dining/living room and thanked her for
sharing her home with me.

Monday, October 5, 2015

It’s not like I attend séances
trying to visit past relatives or old loves.I do not go chasing after them or watch TV shows about ghosts.Mine are incidental encounters.

I believe in ghosts because I
believe in the hereafter. And because I
believe that there is better than the right here, I think the ghosts we do
encounter have a reason to make themselves known in this realm.

I have no explanation why they
want to visit with me but I wish they would do it in the daytime, but that is
never the case. My ghostly visits have
always been at night.

Everyone in my family thinks I am
afraid of the dark. Not so. I am fine with the dark. It’s the night that scares me, and I have my
grandmother and my dad to thank for that.

My grandmother raised us and she
kept us in line with the whole array of Mexican folklore about the llorona
(pronounced yorona), the Cucui (the boogieman), the Diablo, and an assortment
of other scary stories. When we got
older (and properly scared straight), she confessed that Mexican moms tell
those stories to help keep naughty kids in line without having to resort to
punishment each time.

My two sisters and I loved when
our father tucked us into bed each night.
To keep him near us for a while longer, we would beg him to tell us a
story. Some of the tales came from his
mother and some he made up on the spot.
None of them ever ended happy.
After scaring us to pieces, he would tickle us, make us laugh, and bless
us before planting another kiss on our foreheads.

By then I was afraid of the night
and along with that, I was afraid of the dark.

In my grandmother and dad’s
defense, their retelling of Mexican spooky stories was no different than how the
original fairy tales were formed. Almost
all of the modern fairy tales once had scary and sad endings. Their original versions were not necessarily
for children. They were not G-rated or the
sanitized and Disney editions we learn today. They were intended to moralize or
scare or scandalize the reader.

Because I am afraid of the
nighttime (ergo the dark), I totally understand my grandchildren’s need for a
nightlight. While everyone else
dismisses their need to keep a night on in their bedrooms, I provide them with
an excuse when they sleep over at my house.
I plug in “safety” lights or leave a closet door cracked open a bit with
the light on, just in case they need to get up and use the bathroom.

They are in a new place and we
don’t want them to stub a toe, do we?

(Whisper) Besides
I have never encountered a ghost on nights I left a light on in my bedroom.

Monday, September 28, 2015

I got this idea recently when I discovered
all my old journals that I kept for years and years. What if I wrote a novel in three parts? Each one about the same person but in different
years. Each showing how much her life has changed in a short span of time. Here
is a sample of what her journal entries would look like.

* *
* * *

He told her
the management was sacrificing their holiday so the hourly workers could spend
Thanksgiving with their families. Knowing her husband well, she demanded to
know who else had volunteered for this assignment.

He ticked off four names on his
hand. A familiar one was couched in
between the second and the fourth.

Here was the real reason he was
“working” on a holiday.

When she asked why a single
female would give up precious time with her three children when there were so
many others who could take her place, he snarled at his wife, accusing her of
always thinking the worst. She had only asked a simple question, yet he had
responded with guilt.

Just like your mother, he added,
jealous and needy. She retreated. He
always knew how to make her cower.

* *
* * *

She walked out of the medical
building and tried to get to her car before breaking down but the moment she
breathed in the crisp autumn air, the wall she had built around herself
crumbled. Her keening cries scared a young boy and his mother who walked passed
her in the parking lot. After two months of numerous invasive tests, she was
cancer free.

She wiped her face, located her
car, and rushed to it before she cried again. She sighed deeply and smiled. There was a bounce to her step.

She was not the weakling her
ex-husband had once made her believe. She had faced the judge alone when it
came to the divorce and she had done the same when she discovered her illness.

Tomorrow was Thanksgiving Day, and
she had a casserole to make before she visited with her family. Now that she had only good news to share, she
would tell them her story.

* *
* * *

Little work would be done in the
office for the rest of the afternoon so everyone stood around and talked about
the upcoming four-day holiday.

Some would entertain in their
homes and others were traveling across the country to visit family or to enjoy
a short vacation.

I’m heading over to my parents,
said a recently divorced single. My
mother makes the best prime rib.

A couple of my buds are coming
over to my apartment, said another, bragging in a loud voice. We’re going to eat Chinese and watch one
football game after another.

No one asked her plans. She had
been divorced now for several years, and her kids would be spending Thanksgiving
with their father and his girlfriend. When
the kids hesitated, she reminded them they would be back on Saturday. They would be gone only three days.

That was one good thing about the
divorce – it forced her ex-husband to spend time with his children whether it fit
into his and his girlfriend’s plans or not.
If he tried to weasel out of it, the onus was on him.

What are your plans? Her friend’s
breath caressed her ear and she turned to smile up at him. She told him about spending Thanksgiving
dinner with her crazy family.

Take me with you, he said. My
kids are with their mother and I have nowhere else I want to be.

Her smile widened. She could
already picture her sisters’ faces when she drove up with her famous yam
casserole, and a tall, good-looking date for Thanksgiving Dinner.

Monday, September 21, 2015

In
college I took two dance classes and a swimming course for my P.E. requirements,
but for my final class one of my girlfriends decided our group should take a
camping class together. Our final was a three-day camping “survival” course on
the banks of the Guadalupe River; it would be a free, idyllic vacation.

During
the semester we learned how to start a fire with only two sticks. We waxed and waterproofed our tents. We learned basic first aid and sanitary
practices. We prepared for “living in
the wild” in the back lot of the campus by an open field.

On our
survival weekend it down poured and stormed for three days straight. Since it was our “final,” we could not
postpone it for later.

Once we
got to our destination, we unloaded our cars and no one was allowed to go back for
anything. The first thing we did was to scout
an area, clear it of debris, and hunt for dry wood. We covered the wood with plastic tarps to shelter
it from the storm, then we set up our tents.
By then, most everything and everyone was sopping wet.

We ate
hot dogs and hamburgers in bread so soggy it disintegrated in our hands. Our hair
hung on our shoulders like rags, and the girls who never went anywhere without
full makeup, gave up trying by the end of the first day. Contacts were discarded for bifocals and
Cher-like hairdos went up into pony tails.

Probably
the worst was getting used to the outdoor potty we rigged in a secluded copse
of trees. We laughed about it during
class, but this was the real deal. We tried to do our business during daylight
hours because no one wanted to go in the woods at night with only a flashlight
for protection.

Everyone
was assigned duties and mine was to take a two-hour watch at night. We were to keep
the camp fire lit and to make sure no one or thing invaded our campsite while
the others slept. My watch was from 2 am until four am, so for three nights I sat
out in the rain while lightning danced all around me. I could not shelter under a tree because of
the lightning and I was supposed to stay alert and move among the tents. On all three nights, I saw movement in the
trees but when I reported it to our teacher leaders, they said it was just my
imagination.

On our
last day as we broke camp, an older man and a group of boy dressed in scout
uniforms visited our camp. We learned that this group of boys were part of a
troupe camped nearby. They had been
sneaking over to spy on us at night, hoping an unsuspecting college girl would
need to use the bathroom. Their scout leader said they would all be reprimanded
once they got home, and then he dragged them out in front of us and made them apologize.

We all
passed the class with A’s, and my girlfriends and I laughed at our three-day “vacation,”
except for two friends who never forgave the rest of us for forcing them into
this class. In retrospect I think it was because one had to give up her makeup
and we saw what she looked like without it, and the other one used the camp
potty at night and was probably one of the few who exposed her backside to
naughty boy scouts.

Me? I don’t remember many
of the classes I took in college, but I certainly remember that one

Monday, September 14, 2015

I love
how Superman rips off his Clark Kent duds and shows off his mighty chest, not
even bothering to hide his identity, and doing it in plain view of all
Metropolis. In the old movies he had to
find a phone booth; in modern day he just moves at the speed of light and no
one notices him change from one moment to the next. They are too busy looking
at their cell phones.

That’s
us. Clark Kent’s. Heroes, you and me.

We all
have an inner persona that few people ever suspect. On the outside, we slouch
around in our yoga pants, bargain bifocals, and worn out gym shoes, but come
the moment of need and we all have that special something hidden inside of us
that no one else can offer the world.

Why edify
a superhero when we are the real deal?

We are single
parents working hard to raise well balanced children, and I do not mean just
single moms making do but single dads as well. We are two-parent families raising kids in a
modern society that laughs at our attempts to discipline and educate our
kids. We are those who jump into action
when action, no matter how horrendous, has to be taken. We are those who overcome our dysfunctional
upbringings to change the course of our lives despite the circumstances.

Heroism
is everywhere but it is never easy. We
all have our Kryptonite, but we beat the odds every, single day. We don’t need to rip off our Clark Kent duds
to do what needs to be done and we do not expect any accolades.

We
don’t have to be more powerful than a locomotive, faster than a speeding
bullet, or be able to leap tall buildings.
We just have to do what has to get done and do it honorably and with
integrity. We need to look inside ourselves
and find that special something that makes each of us a superhero.

Monday, September 7, 2015

Several years ago, I entered several
“stories” in a fast fiction contest.
They had to tell a story but could only be fifty words long. Here are
two of my favorites.

“He cried because I dumped
him; said he lost everything because of me. “
The woman laughed into her drink, stood up, and staggered toward the exit
before falling dead to the floor.

The female bartender
washed the poison from the woman’s glass. “That’s for my ex-husband and my
kids.”

High school, junior
year, I sat between two, very handsome, senior football players while we
watched the 16 mm film on the male reproductive system. Our Biology II teacher walked around the darkened
classroom, monitoring our attention. Meanwhile
we all laughed that he hadn’t noticed his front fly was unzipped.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Every
time my ex-husband and I moved, I learned to clean house and sell or give away
things I did not want to pack and move to the next house.

The two
times I got divorced it was easy to get rid of the ex’s junk. Without his clothes,
his collections, and his tools out in the garage, it left lots of room for my
stuff. It also gave me permission to replace
all his man cave junk with nice decorations.

When I
married HoneyBunch and we had to combine two households, I cut all my
possessions in half by offering things to my three kids. They were just starting their own homes, so some
took furniture; others took household items. I had a monster of a garage sale
and called the Disabled Vets to come get the rest. Even like that HB and I had
doubles of too many things and so the downsizing continued for a year after we
married.

We still
have two dining tables, two sets of “grandma’s china,” and two truckloads of
Christmas decorations that neither one of us will surrender.

As an
educator for thirty-seven years, I had boxes and boxes of books and teaching
materials, stuff I carted home every summer and stored until the beginning of
school the next fall. Stuff I needed for
reference or to decorate sterile classrooms year after year. When I retired I gave away twenty boxes
jammed with expensive books to the school district in which we live and I threw
away/recycled bins and bins of paper, but here I am, seven years later and
still trying to use up the dozens of pencils and pens, sticky notes and glue,
folders and reams of paper I bought on sale way back then.

The same
thing happened when I decided to reduce the number of books in my house by half. I gave books away, sold some, and then
donated the rest to our local library, but still here we go again. Time to downsize again.

HoneyBunch
and I have decided that as we grow older, we need to have some say about what
happens to our “treasures.” We shouldn’t wait until we have to downsize and have no options because of time restraints. We
don’t want to leave too much of a mess for our kids after we are gone. We know
that most of what we consider valuable will be thrown away or given away, so we
might as well and try to do some of that ourselves.

I hate
dusting so the knickknacks will be the first to go. I am only going to keep the most valuable,
those I cannot do without. I guess the piggy bank I had since college and the
Buddha I bought when I was a hippy will have to go. I own more sets of dishes
than I will ever wear out in the time I have left so they too will be history. And I really, really do not need two
blenders, two mixers, and two punch bowls.

It might
be time to throw away all the plastic containers without lids or give away my collection
of Wilton cake pans to the granddaughter who aspires to be a chef. Maybe I can toss the bag of squashed bows I
keep in the closet for emergency gift wrapping.

Both my ex-grandmother-in-law
and my ex-mother-in-law gave me their Jewel T dishes for safekeeping. I have
never used them except for display, so now may be the time to pass those on to
my daughter.

I pray
(fervently) that my kids think twice before buying me a knickknack for
Christmas. I like chocolate and cash. A
gift card would be nice.

Downsizing
will be difficult for HB and me, but it makes us realize that things are just
that – things. They might have memories attached to them, reminders of the
person who gave the gift, mementos of places and times in our lives, but it
would be wonderful to be unencumbered. It
would be nice to own things and not let them own us.

Monday, August 17, 2015

She
cooked his favorite supper and waited for him to get home from work. Six
o’clock turned into seven, so she called to see what kept him. When he didn’t answer she left a voice mail.

Are you working late? Are you on your way home?

After a
half hour, she tried again, tamping down her suspicions, quieting her
imagination. She schooled her voice to cover her concern.

I made your favorite supper. Should I go ahead and eat without you?

At nine
o’clock, she put away the food, her hunger replaced with anger and
disappointment.

The cycle
was starting again. She knew what to expect next.

He started
coming home later and later each day. At
first, he blamed work, and instead of six, the norm became ten or eleven at
night. She stopped asking for an explanation, because when she did, he yelled
at her; he accused her of nagging.

Her
silence gave him license to do whatever he pleased, but even when she dared to
utter a protest, he turned the blame on her.

Are you gaining weight again? Look how you
dress. Can’t you do something with your
hair?

He never
hit her but his words felt like fists, pounding away at her insecurities and shielding his infidelities.

She
stopped liking him long before she stopped loving him, so when there was
nothing left between them, she demanded he leave.

Insulted,
he packed the tiny bit of him that remained in the house and left.

She
changed the locks and the bank accounts.
She called a lawyer and got divorced. His love affairs never lasted
long, so she knew he would call wanting a “home” again. He listed all the same lame promises she had
heard before many times, but when he started naming what she needed to change,
she hung up on him.

He
was nothing to her. He had no right to
insult her any more.

When his
voice mails got fewer and fewer, she knew his nonsense lived elsewhere. He had found
someone else to own.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Thirty-something
years ago, a lady who worked across the hall from me, handed me a well-worn
paperback. “It reminded me of you,” she
said. I didn’t know what that meant so I
just took it and thanked her. “I want it
back when you finish.” I promised her that I would.

It must
have been a Friday because I remember reading it straight through and returning
it right away. We didn’t discuss the
book’s plot since it was about a haggard, single mother of three who falls in
love with the cutie-pie next door. He
turns out to be the husband and father she and her children deserve. I was a haggard mother of three, married to a
man who acted single. There was no cutie-pie next door willing to rescue
me. On the contrary, the neighbors next
door rented a room to a weirdo who waited for me to go outside so he could peek
at me from behind the ligustrums.

But one
could wish.

My
experience with romance novels was limited. It dated back to when I was an
adolescent and I read my mother’s copy of Gone with the Wind and a risqué novel
she kept hidden from us kids in her bedside table, so when my coworker asked if
I liked the book, I told her I was thoroughly delighted by the genre. She rattled
off the names of three authors she thought I would like and I wrote them down,
promising to read more.

That was
thirty-something years ago and three hundred romance novels. I wish I could remember
the title or the author of that first book.
I would love to have a copy of it for my library.

I wish I
was still in touch with the coworker. I would like to thank her for introducing
me to world of women’s fiction. It has been my companion all these years.

As for
the cutie-pie next door, I married someone very much like him. He turned out to be the husband and
step-father me and my children deserve.

Monday, July 27, 2015

The
teacher was over six feet tall. He
walked around with a scowl on his face and was always angry with everyone. One
year he was assigned a classroom down the hall from me. By then I knew him well. Suffice it to say I was not one of his favorite
ethnic groups. It didn’t bother me, but
that dislike included the majority of the students that made up our middle
school.

His hate
targeted the young men who looked and acted like street gangsters. Most of those kids were just that –
kids. Some did have more street smarts
than they had school smarts, but their attitude almost always was a front to
cover their inability to do the class work and the homework.

He picked
on those boys in the privacy of his classroom, but when they fought back and sassed
him, it spilled out into the hallway.
The teacher would yell close to their faces, goading them to hit him.
Once they took a jab at him the teacher then had a “legal right to defend
himself.” His anger toward these boys was so intense he relished getting them
into trouble. Most of the boys would walk (or run) away and turn themselves
into the principal’s office; a few would throw a jab and the man (twice,
sometimes three times their size) would then hit them in return. The boy would get expelled for assaulting a
teacher when the administration, the faculty, and the students knew that the
teacher was to blame.

I have
never understood why people go into professions or jobs where they hate the
client or the customer. I have known
doctors who do not like their patients.
I have witnessed many a salesclerk with an attitude. This man hated kids, so why was he
“teaching?”

Though we
closed our doors during class time, we could hear the teacher berating someone every day
out in the hallway.

It got
really bad one day. The man was out of
hand. He was yelling obscenities and
racial slurs at a young man. No one
could teach over the fracas, and I knew what was going to happen next, so I
walked toward the classroom door and started outside.

I smiled
at them and told them that if he did, they were to go get the nurse. Pronto.

I stepped
out into the hall and in my best teacher voice, I yelled, “Mr. X, do you need
help? Should I send for the
principal?”

He
snarled something sotto voce at me but I repeated my offer again. Other doors opened and other teachers came
out. With so many witnesses, the bully
backed off the skinny young teen.

I turned
to my classroom and yelled for one boy to go chop-chop and get the
principal. I clapped my hands at him to
go fast. One of my own lovable thugs
took off in a sprint. I yelled down the
hallway to Mr. X that help was on the way.

Within
minutes, the student and a vice-principal returned; both were running. The boy
was escorted to the office, and the mean old bully snarled at me and went back
into his classroom.

From then
on, I made it a habit to step outside every time the teacher yelled at a
student. He hated me more than ever but I didn’t care. I thanked the teachers who had come to my
rescue and knowing it would happen again, asked them to continue backing me.
The man was twice my size, and did I mention, he hated me? When I asked the
principal and vice-principal why they allowed that man to bully his students
like that, they gave me some spineless answer.

In the
years that followed, while I still worked on that campus, we never taught in
the same hallway again. I was told “he calmed down a little.” I have no idea
why, but maybe he knew that too many of us were on to him. He might bully the kids and the
administration, but some of us (like the kids who took a jab at him) weren’t
afraid to try and stand up to him.

Monday, July 20, 2015

I was eleven and tired of being
the middle child, the one who had to help my older brother with his chores
after doing my own, the one who had to look after my younger sister and make
sure she didn’t cry.

I decided to run away that summer
because I felt no one ever noticed me unless someone needed to be blamed for something. If I ran away, I doubted anyone would even
notice.

I stayed awake for several nights
in a row to listen for Dad’s snores and my mother’s and grandmother’s deep
breathing. It signaled they were fast asleep.

During the day, I counted the
steps between my bed and the front door, and I practiced opening the lock with
a minimum of noise. Since I would be
running at night and the house would be dark, I tried doing it with my eyes
closed. My grandmother scolded me for my
pantomime, and my mom yelled at me to go outside and see about my sister.

I made a hobo pack out of an old
scarf and hid it under my pillow every night when I went to bed. Inside was a
full set of clothes, a flashlight, and a box of matches I stole from my
grandmother’s smoking supplies. I tied
up my life savings ($1.83) inside a handkerchief, and I took a map of Texas
from the junk drawer in the kitchen. I had no idea where I was headed, but any
place was better than here.

The night of my great escape, I
took my bath and went to bed early. When
my grandmother asked, I told her I was tired.
Instead of pajamas, I wore a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and covered
myself up to my chin with the bed sheet.
I told my grandmother I was afraid of the mosquitoes. My tennis waited under the bed and my hobo
pack was under my pillow.

All I had to do was wait for the
cover of night.

Several hours later, I started
out of bed when I heard my father snore, but my mother scolded him and their
bed jiggled, and the house was silent again. I counted to one hundred, then
quietly grabbed my things. I tiptoed into
the hallway and on the tenth step, the floor squeaked.

“Who’s there?” My mother asked from her bedroom, her voice
groggy from sleep.

I didn’t answer, so she asked
again, but this time louder and more demanding.

“Me.” I whispered.

“What are you doing?” Her voice sounded more assured now that she
knew it was me and not a burglar. If she
got up, how would I explain the clothes and the hobo pack?

“I was going to the bathroom.” I answered.

“Well, go then,” she scolded, “and
then get back into bed.”

I could hear snuffles and movement coming from
the bedrooms. Others were waking because of our noise. Shoulders sagging, I marched into the
bathroom and forced myself to pee, then I trudged back into my bedroom and into
bed.

I thought about trying again at a
later time, but the idea of it all had lost its drama. If Mom caught me a second time, she would have
tortured the truth out of me then topped it off with a spanking. If I was really serious about running away, I
could have just walked out the front door, right under their noses.

But I stayed. I stayed because in those few minutes as I
tiptoed my way in the dark down the hall, I realized that if I succeeded, I
would prove myself right – no one cared that I existed. I had been planning this in front of all my
family for weeks and no one cared to ask what I was doing.

That night, I prayed someone
would stop me, yell at me for trying such a thing, spank me for even thinking
it.